“You may have wondered what happened to my personal message in last the last CMA Quarterly. Internally, we made the decision that there were just too many wonderful things going on in the firm for us to “waste” nearly 1/3rd of our publication on my thoughts. Over the years, though, I’ve gotten so much wonderful feedback from some of the stories that I wrote, we wondered how to keep that connection going with our audience. Since the term blog has been around for over 20 years, though, that seemed like a great way to transition.”
The above was repeated from the print version of the Quarterly as I didn’t have space to get into my research on blogging that happened as we decided delve into this space. Blogs really opened up the ability for the average person to communicate with “the masses” of the World Wide Web. That is pretty fitting as the Quarterly allowed me to get my message and feelings out to all of the Quarterly readers.
The Winterly Quarterly is typically the time that I try to reflect on the past year. 2017 was such a crazy year for me, with the transition of ownership in the firm and, even more importantly, the birth of my daughter Sofia that I was hoping 2018 would be a much calmer year. Little did I know that 2018 would be just as stressful, if not more stressful, than the previous year. We’ve dealt with firm growth and I’ve dealt with first steps as the year progressed. CMA and Sofia both become more dynamic as time goes on, but I also get more and more nervous as the risks they face grow accordingly. So, managing risk and the associated stress was on the front of my mind as 2018 came to an end.
Is it socially acceptable for one to talk about being nervous or stressful? Is it a sign of weakness? I know most traditional definitions of leadership and, the unpopular term “manliness” often have felt that those traits are signs of weakness. As all the readers of the Quarterly know, though, I have no problem talking about the things that make me human. I think it is more important to talk about how to manage these normal human emotions than to ignore them before they take over. How do you manage stress? As we get older, we forget to prioritize ourselves in the guise of saying that “we’re too busy”. While our families and our jobs are incredibly important, if you aren’t centered and happy with yourself, the stress that you feel will make you a burden and not an asset to those most important to you. Please feel free to comment about your feelings on making time for yourself.
I hope to generate even more conversations than before with this blog. I’ve also asked some of our practice and discipline leaders to develop blogs of their own to share their views and breakthroughs. Please enjoy this additional feature to the CMA website and feel free to share your thoughts and comments! Please scroll to the bottom of this page and click on ‘Write a Comment’ and then ‘Login to Leave a Comment’ and create a user name and password.
